#夏日创作营 Is SpaceX a dream or a nightmare!

Iron Man was still human in the end, not a god. The essence of business is not creating myths, but generating value. SpaceX’s stock price volatility precisely proves this.
When the market cools down from the IPO frenzy back to rationality, investors begin to scrutinize every expense, every launch, and operational data for every satellite with a magnifying glass.
On June 12, its first day of trading after listing, the record-breaking $86 billion largest IPO—SpaceX—closed at $160.9, up more than 19% from the $150 issue price. In the three days after listing, the stock surged 50%,
On June 16 it touched a historic high of $225.6, corresponding to a total market cap of $2.66 trillion, at one point surpassing Amazon to enter the global top five by market capitalization among listed companies, and Musk became the world’s first trillionaire.
However, starting June 22, SpaceX saw a daily plunge of 16.4%, with a $400 billion market value wiped out, setting the second-largest single-day contraction record in US stock history;
On July 7, after being added to the Nasdaq-100 index, it fell 6.83% on its first trading day, dropping below the $150 opening price;
On July 15, during the session it first fell below the $135 issue price, and it closed down for four consecutive trading days;
On July 16, Starship was forced to terminate a launch due to an engine malfunction;
On July 21, after the Falcon 9 rocket ignited, the launch was urgently halted. In just one month, SpaceX’s stock price was cut in half from the $225 peak, with more than $1 trillion in market value erased. Musk’s fortune fell from $1.45 trillion to $760 billion. As of the time of writing, SpaceX has just crawled out of a streak of seven consecutive declines; its lowest price has already reached $119.68. Iron Man Musk’s “trillionaire” title lasted less than two weeks. The story of the tattooed Asian girl who holds the button to ignite SpaceX rockets also only lasted for one month. From the world’s first IPO to a broken issue—finishing in one month the road others take a year!
A month ago, this company was still the “chosen one” of global capital markets, the “light of humanity.” Musk was not only a dreamer who could get humanity to Mars in five years and explore the stars and seas for ten years, but also a wealth creator who made the net worth of thousands of early employees drop by more than a million. But Musk’s most impressive part has never been sending people to Mars—it has been taking a money-burning, smoke-out space business and forcibly packaging it into a deal that could be listed, financed, and make employees get rich with it. If you only listen to press conferences and only look at PPTs, you’d think this is another leap forward for human civilization. Musk would, like Magellan, open a new route between humanity and outer space. But when you look closely at the ledgers, at equity, at the supply chain, and at its underlying logic, you’ll find a painfully stark fact: SpaceX is not selling anything close to stars and the boundless sea—it is selling scarce narratives, selling monopoly positions, selling the world’s continued obsession with the “Musk myth.” You think you’re buying a ticket to land on Mars, a voyage toward the future—but actually you’re only buying a supply of fuel for the company’s valuation to soar. And this fuel is burning away at a visible rate.
Because SpaceX’s business model is, in essence, a carefully designed “narrative arbitrage.” Next, let’s break down step by step how SpaceX’s “narrative arbitrage” works.
In February 2026, it combined loss-making xAI and the X platform into SpaceX via an all-stock acquisition, redefining the traditional aerospace company as “the world’s first space-grade general artificial intelligence infrastructure provider.” It replaced a single rocket-launch valuation model with a closed-loop story of “orbital data centers” and “Starlink network + xAI compute,” forcibly benchmarking AI giants like Nvidia instead of traditional industrial stocks to expand valuation potential. At the same time, this merger and acquisition, via a $20 billion bridge loan, transferred $17.5 billion of junk debt from xAI and the X platform onto SpaceX’s balance sheet, and it was agreed that SpaceX would repay it six months after going public. In other words, it wrapped a pile of hot potatoes in gold foil labeled “space AI,” and stuffed them into the mouths of investors who were already investing and those about to invest.
In May 2026 to early June, SpaceX signed long-term AI compute contracts with Anthropic ($1.25 billion per month) and Google (about $920 million per month), locking in recurring revenue of more than $2.1 billion per month in total. Disclosing these big deals on the eve of the IPO was essentially using an AI story to backstop a high valuation.
Although its AI business (xAI) was still in a state of massive losses at the time (Q1 2026 loss of $2.5 billion), these contracts made the market believe in its profit prospects, supporting an IPO valuation as high as $1.77 trillion. The prospectus claimed a potential market size of $26.5 trillion (mainly from imagination around AI and compute), emphasized that costs would fall by two orders of magnitude after Starship was fully reused, and created an illusion of “a certain explosion of growth.” On June 4, 2026: it launched the roadshow, designed “hunger marketing” to manufacture stock scarcity, and planned to issue about 556 million shares at $135 per share, raising $75 billion. On the one hand, the IPO only issued 4.2% of total shares outstanding, creating scarcity; on the other hand, it opened subscription for the floating shares to retail investors, allocating 20% of the slots, using “retail mania” and a structure of “low float + high sentiment” to trigger a scramble to buy and push up the opening-day share price.
June 12, 2026: it officially listed, and the stock price soared. After listing on Nasdaq, on the first day SpaceX’s share price rose about 20%, then continued to climb for several more trading days. At one point the market cap neared $3 trillion, and the price-to-sales ratio (P/S) exceeded 100x. An extremely low float ratio (4.2%) and retail investors’ frantic buying (net purchases of $405 million over the first five trading days) jointly amplified price volatility, achieving the effect of manipulating market value.
June 14, 2026: media interpreted details from the prospectus, disclosing that Musk used a multi-class share structure (Class B: 1 share equals 10 votes) and an “extreme challenge” incentive plan. Through the A/B share classes, Musk controlled about 82.4% of voting power in SpaceX, which was diluted to about 82.3% after the IPO. This “one share, ten votes” super-voting structure allowed Musk to enjoy the capital-market premium while being almost unconstrained by any external checks. But the cost is: when the company needs continuous fundraising, issuing debt, or mergers and acquisitions, the market becomes increasingly cautious about a “one-man rule” governance structure. On June 16, 2026, SpaceX announced an all-stock acquisition of Anysphere, the parent company of the AI programming tool Cursor. The implied valuation for Cursor was $26.6k. The deal was expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2026. Anysphere would become a wholly-owned subsidiary of SpaceX as the surviving company. (Previously, in April 2026, both sides had announced a model training collaboration, SpaceX had obtained an option to acquire, and it exercised that power after the IPO.) At this time, the share price during the session reached a peak of $225.64, providing generous ammunition for the transaction. This “swap peak stock price for strategic assets” move is essentially a gamble betting that expanding the business map will keep the myth alive, and that it can build bubble upon bubble.
June 23, 2026: SpaceX announced the issuance of about $20 billion investment-grade bonds to repay the bridge loans taken out for the earlier xAI acquisition. After the news was released, the stock price evaporated by about $60 billion over three days, the largest drop since listing. This is a combo punch of: using a high-priced buyback-for-upgrades to acquire the company, cashing out at high levels, and issuing new debt to repay.
(1) Use the skyrocketing stock price and credit rating (investment grade) after listing to issue bonds at extremely low cost, repay the short-term high-interest loans from the xAI acquisition, and optimize the debt structure;
(2) Although Musk himself did not directly reduce his holdings, issuing bonds to finance it effectively used market money to pay for the earlier acquisition—achieving de facto cash-out.
The market began voting with its feet: investors realized that the company had taken on massive new debt again less than two weeks after listing, and that the profitability outlook for its AI business was unclear (xAI losses exceeded $6 billion in 2025), triggering a sell-off wave. Market confidence wavered. SpaceX’s share price fell from the $225.64 peak all the way down to around $180, wiping out nearly $1 trillion in market value.
Wall Street analysts began questioning Musk’s “capital shuffling technique”: issuing bonds at inflated valuations, swapping bonds for assets, and then using those assets to tell stories to maintain valuation.
Next, on July 7, 2026, after being added to the Nasdaq-100 index, the first trading day fell 6.83%, dropping below the $150 opening price; on July 15, during the session it first fell below the $135 issue price, and it closed down for four consecutive trading days;
On July 16, Starship was forced to terminate launches due to engine failure;
On July 21, after the Falcon 9 rocket ignited, the launch was urgently halted. After several rounds of heavy blows, SpaceX’s stock price had already fallen to about 15% below the issue price, and its market cap had shrunk by more than 40% from the peak.
The market began to summarize that week’s “triple strike”: the index inclusion effect faded, launch missions kept hitting setbacks, and losses in the AI business continued to expand. More fatally, investors began to doubt SpaceX’s core narrative—whether it is truly a “space exploration company” or “Musk’s capital instrument.”
When the narrative of “space exploration” was covered by doubts about “capital shuffling,” the market’s valuation logic for SpaceX shifted from “dream premium” to “risk discount.” And this roller coaster ride from peak to trough reveals the essence of capital markets: when the story is no longer believed, the bubble loses its supporting skeleton.
When the story is no longer believed, the bubble loses the supporting skeleton. S3 Partners, a financial analysis firm, estimates that currently about 206 million shares of SpaceX are being shorted, accounting for about 32% of the company’s publicly tradable float, with a nominal short position size of about $25 billion. Compared with about 185 million shares (29% of float) from last week, this is higher, and it is also a big jump from the estimated 40 million shares about one month ago (about 5% to 7% of float).
Facing the steadily rising short positions, Musk posted a reply on a social platform: “Investors who short SpaceX will ultimately lose money.” “The survival probability of institutions that are heavily shorting SpaceX for the long term is extremely low.” He also said, “I’ve said that if we achieve our goals, SpaceX’s value will exceed the entire Earth—there’s no doubt about that.” Of course, the prerequisite is “if” the goals can be achieved. Next, Musk’s problem is that SpaceX will release its first quarterly earnings report since listing after the US stock market closes on August 4, and starting August 6, there will be restricted shares worth up to $116 billion that will be unlocked. Once early investors cash out, retail investors will be forced to take the bag, and the upcoming earnings report will also give investors their first detailed look at the company’s operating situation—becoming a key test for the next round of bull-bear games.
Of course, SpaceX’s story is far from over. Above, the Starlink constellation is still growing; on the ground, Starship is still in test flights; and Mars land is still calling. Even the AI bubble has not fully burst. It’s just that the capital market has already voted with its stock price: solve the problems at hand, then discuss the stars and the boundless sea.
In fact, for every corporate executive, decision-maker, and investor, SpaceX’s broken issue is a $1 trillion lesson in value. From the IPO to listing, every step is a perfectly calculated and packaged business plan book. Every step precisely empties different investors’ wallets. And Musk remains the world’s richest person, still the most disruptive entrepreneur. It’s just that this time, the market reminded him: in the face of capital, maybe no one can forever avoid facts and only tell stories. $SPCX